


Lose Something (you can't replace)

by slashersivi



Series: Losermorphs [1]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Eventual Cougar/Jensen, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashersivi/pseuds/slashersivi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or Losermorphs v. Death and Rebirth, a rather dark (and maybe batshit insane) crossover that probably only makes sense in my head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Marco: The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> FYI this story doesn't flow nicely. I am writing it in pieces and not covering absolutely everything that is referred to. I may go back and write more detailed scenes in between, but likely not. It's kind of like an extended series of drabbles. Also, this is my first attempt at writing Animorphs material and it's been awhile since I read the books so, along with intentional divergence from canon, some of the backstory may be fuzzy at times.  
> See end notes for spoilers/additional warnings.

Marco hadn’t wanted to be a soldier back then, just as Jake hadn’t wanted to be a leader. They did it because they had to, because there was no one else that could. They had fought a secret war, waiting for the cavalry to arrive, losing some part of themselves with every battle and yet clinging to hope. Until even hope was extinguished and they fought out of sheer desperation.

Tobias was the first to fall, burned out of the sky by a dracon beam; he died instantly, in a flash of light, leaving only ash. Rachel was cut down in the battle that followed, mad with rage and grief, deaf to Jake’s orders and Cassie’s pleas for her to retreat. The burns of the dracon beams kept her from bleeding out too quickly from her wounds. She tore through Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, and humans alike, leaving a swathe of broken bodies and torn limbs in her wake, even as nearly all of her fur was seared off by dracon beams until she was a hellish, corpse-like nightmare of a bear. She was stunned by a blow to the head that left her muzzle sliced half off; their enemies took that opportunity to deal the killing blows.

The rest of them escaped, but that battle had been devastating. Now there were only four of them left, and Cassie had withdrawn so far into herself that she wouldn’t speak and moved almost mechanically. Ax mourned his shorm and would respond only when addressed by Jake. Jake himself tried to hold them all together, maintaining his brave face even when Marco knew he just wanted to give up. Marco also knew that the bone-deep hatred of the Yeerks he shared with Jake was the only thing that got them up in the morning. His hatred for Visser 3, now Visser 1, who had made a controller of his father and had his mother put to death, along with the previous Visser 1. 

It was Erek King who put Jake in contact with ATF1, and brought two officers to meet them on the edge of the Hork-Bajir valley. Cassie stayed behind while Jake and Marco morphed their parents for the meeting, with Ax as their guard and a party of Hork-Bajir in the surrounding trees.  
Both men were tall and solidly built, with a few days of stubble and well-worn fatigues. Marco glanced at their insignia to confirm their ranks - a captain and a first lieutenant. Not exactly top-of-the-totem-pole, but not grunts either. The captain maintained a poker face, though his lieutenant stared openly at Ax, first in disbelief and then admiringly when he registered the tailblade, as Erek (under the projection of a government agent) made the introductions.

"Captain Franklin Clay, Lieutenant Roque, this is the leader of the resistance, Jake Berenson, his second-in-command Marco, and the alien is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, of the Andalite race you were briefed on."

"You can just call me Clay," the Captain said gruffly. He and Jake held eye contact for a few long seconds before he crossed his arms and continued, "So we got an all-out invasion of some goddamn brain-stealing space slugs on our hands, and it’s up to a handful of soldiers and your little rag-tag band to stop it, eh?" He smiled grimly, "Well, we’re ready, so what have you got?"


	2. Marco: After

Marco looked at himself in the glass-like mirror of the lake. He’d always had pretty good self-esteem, in spite of his height. But after everything, he could feel only loathing when he looked into his own dark eyes. He had failed.

They had destroyed the Yeerk poolship, but Visser 3 (and wouldn't Marco always think of him as Visser 3, even if he wasn't?) had escaped with an anonymous human in the chaos of the battle, after Ax had slain Alloran in mid-morph. Ax and Jake fought back-to-back after that, but both had already sustained grievous wounds and were overwhelmed by Taxxons, although most of the human controllers on the bridge had broken and run once Alloran's head had hit the deck.

Marco only had this information second-hand; he had been with Clay, Roque, and a few of the other ATF1 soldiers, fighting through the lower levels of the ship to get the explosives set. Their party took some casualties but managed to get to the engine room when Marco heard Jake's last thoughtspoken message - - and then nothing. Cassie, who would have probably gone down fighting as well, if Jake hadn't gone along with Marco’s urging (“Jake, you know she’s not in fighting shape right now, and we BOTH know you can’t do what needs to be done if you’re spending the whole time worrying about her. Cassie’s parents will help us do it safely.”) to sedate her while she slept the night before, ensuring she wouldn't be there for the final battle. Wouldn't have to see more of her friends die horribly, or witness the massive explosion that would take out thousands of Yeerks and controllers. But of course, she would know it had happened. And Marco knew that Cassie wouldn't let him take care of her. She probably wouldn't even want to look at him. She may have gone mute, but Marco was pretty sure she could deduce who came up with the idea to leave her behind.

That was just fine - he didn't want to see his face either. So here he was, staring into the lake, feeling the gravelly sand press into his knees and palms. Then he closed his eyes and felt the tears track down his cheeks as he thought of his best friend. Jake, so loyal and brave, and selfless to the end. The determined set of his jaw, the strong chin, the more pronounced slope of his nose, the worrying brow. And then he thought of Rachel, who probably would have killed him if she'd known he had acquired her way back when. Rachel the warrior princess, with her golden hair and cold blue eyes and full, smirking lips. The changes were subtle and took no time at all. The only thing he felt was a slight lengthening of his bones, and he could tell he was heavier too. When he opened his eyes, Marco was gone.

Rachel's eyes appraised him from Jake's face. Blonde hair fell down his forehead in a messy sweep. He hadn't realized he was holding his breath; he let it out now with a slightly choked sob. But he didn't look away. His tears dried as the sun rose higher in the sky and, finally, he stood and walked away from the shore.


	3. Marco: Rebirth

It was hard, at first, to get used to his new body. Not because it felt all that different, but because he knew Jake and Rachel wouldn't have approved. But they were gone, he'd made his decision and there was no going back.

He lived out of Ax's old scoop, building on what he'd already known and what he'd picked up from the Andalite when it came to computers. It started small, just snooping around some, seeing what he could get into without getting caught.

The pool ship may have been destroyed, but there were still controllers, surviving from scattered, unknown Kandrona locations. The war was still secret, but now it had also gone cold, presumably while the Yeerks waited for reinforcement from their homeworld. Marco occasionally came upon encrypted Yeerk communications, and sometimes he could even break them, but if he got something useful, what was he going to do about it? He was just one kid - well, almost 17, but not even morph-capable anymore. He was just trying to get by until he could figure out what the hell he was going to do.

He had tried finding more about ATF1 and what the government knew or was planning to do about a possible retaliation for the destruction of the pool ship, but he couldn't find anything. It had all been hushed up, the explosion and resulting crater reported by the media as some horrible accident associated with an old munitions stockpile. Most of the world still had no clue that there had very nearly been an alien takeover, that it still might be imminent.

He'd been hacking the bank accounts of controllers he knew about, siphoning off small enough amounts and covering his trail to give him enough to live on. He figured Yeerks wouldn't pay all that much attention to finances, but it couldn't hurt to be too careful. He lived alone for months, sleeping maybe four hours a night, mind whirring constantly, causing him to babble or rant to himself. If anyone had found him, they probably would think he'd gone crazy. His only human contact was when he went into town on his bike once a week for supplies, but he didn't talk then if he could help it. No one gave him a second glance in his plain, somewhat ragged clothes, blonde hair grown out and a bit wild, eyes shuttered behind a pair of fake glasses. He was going to need a real prescription soon, with all this staring at the computer screen.   
He woke up one morning with his face mashed into his keyboard, blinked blearily at the screen, and realized it was Jake's birthday. Jake's body, Jake's birthday; now his body, might as well be his birthday too. Jake's life had been cut too short. What would he be doing today, if he had been allowed to grow up as a normal kid? There would still have been school, but then Marco would have dragged him to the arcade, followed by burgers and shakes- no, pizza, because Jake would have wanted Cassie to be there too, and they could get veggie pizza. They probably would have held hands the whole time and generally been a disgustingly cute couple. 

He ruthlessly stopped that train of thought. There was no point thinking about what might have been. What he needed to do was stop being worthless and _do_ something with his - Jake's - life. He needed to get into a position where he could do some real damage to the Yeerks, maybe even find Visser 3, and yet remain fairly anonymous. Seventeen was practically an adult, and Jake could pass for older now. He'd always been tall for his age, in decent shape even before he had to fight for his life on a daily basis. Marco's months in the scoop had let his body get softer, but he'd surely be able to put on muscle easier than he could have with his old body. He knew what he had to do, and how to do it, starting with a new identity.  
He could be Jake easily enough. Hearing the name had made him turn his head for years now, and it was so common no one would pay it any notice. He toyed with the idea of taking on the last name of a comic-book character, Rogers or Stark maybe, but that was too cliché even for him. And he wasn't a hero. 

Jake's last name had been Berenson, but he couldn't keep that. Still, he typed it into a blank document. Then he typed his old last name. Garcia. While a pretty common name, that was about as Hispanic as you could get, and in Jake's body with Rachel's eyes and hair he looked like the poster child for whitebread America. Same problem with his mother's surname, Jimenez. Granted, there were white Spaniards, but no. He needed to leave that identity behind. Maybe he could combine them, somehow. Jimenson. Sounded too awkward. Jeren. Bleh, sounded like some kind of hip first name. Jenson. Better, but he'd never been a fan of the "son" ending names, they just seemed egotistical or something. "Son of Beren!" Okay, well that sounded pretty cool, but "Son of Jen!" didn't have the same ring. So one spelling tweak. Jensen. It was rather linguistically satisfying. Short but balanced. Like his old self, har-dee-har. He typed it out together. Jake Jensen. He liked it, but it needed something to give it more authenticity. He needed a backstory. Maybe he went by Jake because Jacob was his middle name, and he didn't like his first name because it was too old-fashioned, or boring. He immediately thought of William Shakespeare, because good old Will had put him to sleep many an English class.

Now he just needed to create a paper trail that looked real without being particularly notable. A few hours later, he had a social security number, a birth certificate, and a high school diploma for one William Jacob Jensen. And it was time for Jake to join the Army.


	4. Jensen: Basic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ((Sorry, tense shift. Aaaand going more inner-narrative also. I felt it was appropriate though))

His name is Jensen now, and he is just another body in a sea of camo and buzz cuts. His vision had gotten barely bad enough to need glasses, and the Army gave him a pair of thick-framed, nigh-indestructible monstrosities casually referred to as "BCGs" or birth-control glasses. Efficacy in pregnancy reduction aside, he likes them because when people look at him, the BCGs are all they see. 

He is lanky and on the small side, even among guys only a year older who had come in legally. Having known Tom, and Jake's parents, Jensen is confident he will grow, but for now he is just under 5'9, rather average. From "Big Jake" to a little shitstain on his drill sergeant's boot, but that was okay; no one looked at little guys, unless they weren't pulling their weight.  
Marco had hated PE with the fire of a thousand suns, but as Jake everything seemed so much easier; he'd been a natural athlete. Running still isn't his favorite thing to do, but it isn't so bad either, and every day he gets faster, can keep going longer. There's something freeing about that. Plus, he gets to yell ridiculous cadences, and that has to be the best thing about Basic.   
Compared to facing actual death and potential enslavement, saying "Yes, Ser'nt!" or climbing a rope or doing a million push-ups is cake. And all of the physical activity has him so wiped out at the end of the day that he actually sleeps soundly rather than being plagued by nightmares or suffering from insomnia caused by the incessant buzz of his own brain. There was only one thing that scared the shit out of him about the Army.

It was something he kind of always knew but had been successfully in denial about. After all, he wasn't completely blind about his feelings for Jake. But Jake had confided in Marco about real crushes on girls, and then of course fallen in love with Cassie. And he'd seen the way people treated fags, been bully-bait enough as it was, between being short and a "pretty boy," that he made a point to always act very interested in girls. Though, he was also good at being obnoxious enough that none of the girls showed too much interest in return. Eventually it was like a knee-jerk response to make tasteless comments about how hot a girl was. Then there was the war, which kind of killed his libido anyway.

But now he's surrounded by guys 24 hours a day, literally trains, eats, sleeps, and showers with them, and his body doesn't seem to care about his denial, or that he'd signed a form, or that there was the whole Don't Ask, Don't Tell thing. He was young and healthy and goddamn there were some fine specimens in his platoon and it's a bit difficult to NOT see man ass at the, pun intended, bare minimum, when using communal showers. At least they have to be very short showers, and Jensen could suffer them being cold if it prevented him from getting an erection in the middle of a bunch of not-exactly-the-paragons-of-tolerance man's men.  
He might not have nightmares anymore, but he sometimes wakes up to his alarm with fleeting, rather explicit images of one of his "battle buddies" on the back of his eyelids, achingly hard and no time or privacy to do anything about it. He also tries not to think about the fact that his dick is now Jake's (which, yeah it has been for months now, but during those months he'd basically been in mourning, not experiencing some kind of unwelcome sexual awakening). Thankfully, morning wood is pretty much par for the course among dudes and none of them are mind-readers. He only has to recall the memory of a Taxxon to get his hard-on to go down.

Anyway, Jensen has no intention of telling anyone about his regulation-breaking potential tendencies. But sometimes his eyes wander, and he can't really control the fact that his heart jumps when Alvarez gives him a rare smile. He just hopes no one picks up on it, because the poorly-suppressed thoughts are making him feel like the gayest gay boy who ever gayed. Does he march funny? Does he look too girly with Rachel's lips? Is he going to cuddle up to Powell in his sleep when they have to share poncho tents out in the field? It's not as terrifying as fighting aliens but it still puts his anxiety through the roof.

Fortunately, he only has to endure the constant proximity and shared quarters and communal showers during training. Once he gets to the real Army, it'll be more like any other job. Then it should be back to business as usual for the "no really, I'm straight! I am soooo straight! I'm thinking about that girl's tit's right now!" act. Which actually sounds kind of terrible, now that he thinks about it. Maybe denial and hiding used to be like breathing before, but the more he thinks about it, the more he doesn't want it to go on. So maybe joining the Army wasn't the best choice he ever made. Still, it's a means to an end. He has to think about the big picture. There are more important things than his little gay pity-party. Like finding Visser 3 and feeling the slug squish under his flawlessly polished boot.

**Author's Note:**

> Character death: Tobias, Rachel, Jake, and Ax (in the first two chapters); reference to death of Marco's mother, Eva.  
> Marco becomes a nothlit in the form of Jake, with some features from Rachel. In otherwords, the very unlikely origin story of one Jake Jensen.
> 
> Yes the title is an obvious and uninspired rip from "Fix You" by Coldplay.


End file.
